When it Snows
by avesnovuelan
Summary: Everything's Magical when it Snows. LL See inside for actual synopsis. Chapter 2 up COMPLETE
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing but the computer this story is being written on and the hands that are writing it. The opening quotes are from "Love and War and Snow" and "Women of Questionable Morals."

**Synopsis**: What if Chris and Lorelai hadn't made up during _The Great Stink_, and Connecticut was hit by an early snowstorm? L/L

**A/N**: Assume that Lorelai and Chris drove separately to Friday night dinner, and that Rory never showed up.

**A/N II**: If any of you are reading my other fic, _The Balance of the Universe_, don't worry, I'm not taking a sabbatical. If any of you are not reading it, you should be!

When it Snows

Part 1

"_Everything's magical when it snows, everything looks pretty. Do you know that the best things in my life have happened when it snowed? My best birthday, my first kiss, Rory's first steps…When it snows, something inside me says, 'hey, that's your present.' I don't think it'll ever change. Flakes, flurries, swirls, crystals, whatever form it comes in. I'll take it. We go back, snow and me. We have a beautiful history."_

Lorelai put on her coat slowly, still refusing to look Chris in the eye.

"Are you sure you should be driving?" her mother was asking, "It looks like the snow is only going to get worse."

"Well, then I'll just have to make it home before it does. Good night mom, dinner was great."

"Well then, at least drive carefully. And call me when you get home. Are you sure you shouldn't stay?" Emily was still talking, but Lorelai was already on her way to her car.

"I'll be fine!" she called back, thinking only of getting out of that house and away from Christopher, who was still standing next to Emily in the foyer.

_He has no respect whatsoever for my opinions. I have a kid, god damn it, and my opinion on child-rearing should count to someone! _

She realized that in her head she wasn't yelling at Christopher, but at Luke. At that realization, she sighed. _Maybe Sookie was right. Maybe as frustrated as I am with Chris, maybe that's just me missing Luke._

Her train of thought continued as she slowly navigated the road from Hartford back to Stars Hollow. She was so distracted; in fact, that she hardly noticed the snow getting heavier and heavier, until seemingly out of nowhere she was in a complete white-out. She slowed the Jeep down to 15 miles per hour and gripped the steering wheel so hard that she was sure her knuckles were white inside her gloves.

She could no longer see five feet in front of the jeep, and had no idea where the road was. This became painfully obvious as she felt the tires being pulled to the side in a snow drift, and soon she was in the ditch, tilted at a 45-degree angle.

"Hmph," she breathed, as she realized that she was stranded, after a horrible fight, during her precious first snow-fall of the year.

--

Back at the elder Gilmore house, Emily was starting to panic. It had been more than 1 hour since Lorelai had left, and yet there was still no phone call. She picked up the phone and dialed the number of her daughter's cell, only to be startled by a loud trilling from the direction of the living-room sofa. She followed the sound only to discover Lorelai's cell-phone, which had apparently slipped out of her purse and ended wedged inside the couch.

--

Lorelai was desperately trying to remember every cheesy cable movie she'd ever seen about someone getting stuck in their car during a snowstorm. She knew two things for sure: she shouldn't run the engine and keep the windows up because she could die of asphyxiation, and she was really screwed because she'd lost her cell phone.

_Whose bright idea was it anyway to buy a jeep? They have absolutely no insulation. Plastic windows? Who ever heard of plastic windows. _

She killed the engine but left the key turned half way so that her lights would stay on, hopefully alerting any passing vehicles. She searched her entire car for anything remotely resembling a blanket. She found one of Rory's Yale sweatshirts and put it on over her dress. Eventually, though, it got so cold that she had to turn the car back on, deciding that suffocating sounded more pleasant than freezing to death. She ran it for ten minutes just to warm it up and then turned it off again. Then she pulled her knees up to her chest and hugged them, trying to think warm thoughts.

--

_Damn snow._

Luke pulled his truck over to the side of the road under a bridge to wait for the white-out to end. He was simultaneously thanking God for four-wheel drive and cursing Him for the stupid weather.

_It's October. When was the last time we had a white-out in October? Damn weather. Damn snow. Damn truck. Damn suppliers that make me go all the way to Hartford just to correct some stupid paperwork error. Damn me for deciding not to leave Hartford at 4 when the meeting was over, thinking I could wait out the snow for a couple hours. Damn weather forecaster for not predicting this blizzard. _

The absolute worst of the snow was done in a half hour, and Luke decided to keep going, even though he could still see no more than 50 feet ahead of him.

--

Around a half-hour after Lorelai first went in the ditch, the snow had lightened up from the level of a white-out blizzard to only a heavy snowstorm. She could see about 50 feet in all directions, which increased her hope that someone would see her. At one point she guessed that she could probably drive if she could only get her car out of the ditch. So she turned the engine on, put the car in drive, and hit the accelerator.

The wheels whined and spun, succeeding in only digging themselves deeper in the snow. Lorelai slapped the steering wheel in frustration, which of course did nothing but hurt her hands.

Her efforts had warmed the engine back up a bit, which warmed the inside of the jeep a bit. Lorelai once again cut the engine and threw her head back in resignation.

--

About 50 feet ahead of him Luke could make out a vehicle off to the side, tilted at a 45 degree angle.

--

Lorelai thought she heard the rumble of a noisy engine approaching. In the hopes that she was right, she started pumping the brake pedal to repeatedly engage and disengage the brake lights.

--

The car (or truck? He couldn't tell) was flashing its break lights, presumably as some sort of distress signal. Luke pulled as close to the side of the road as he dared without risking going in the ditch, about 20 feet behind the stranded vehicle. Odd, it looked suspiciously familiar. _Wait a second…11:00 on a Friday night, on the road from Hartford to Stars Hollow? Could it possibly be…?_

--

Lorelai could see her rescuer approaching in her side mirror. It was a man, with broad shoulders. He looked tough. Her fear of being stranded on the side of the road was replaced with a new fear of having to accept a ride from a complete stranger who was obviously strong enough to do just about whatever he pleased…Lorelai forced the thought from her mind.

--

Luke was standing up to his knees in a snow drift, tapping on the window of the jeep. Lorelai turned and let out a little gasp as she recognized the face on the other side. She unzipped the window. "Luke?"

"Lorelai, are you okay?"

"Oh yeah, just peachy." She put extra emphasis on the last word.

"Do you…want a ride or something?"

"Nah, I thought I'd sit here and reenact the Donner party."

"By yourself?"

Lorelai scrunched her eyebrows, pretending to consider the possibilities. "Yeah, I guess that wouldn't work too well, would it."

Luke opened her door and extended her his hand to help her over the snow bank and to his truck. She hesitated for a moment, much like she had done more than two years earlier at his sister's wedding. Dancing with Luke had seemed to her then to be almost as ridiculous of an idea as going with him was now, but not dancing with him would have been even a worse idea, much like sitting here in her poorly insulated jeep and freezing to death would be. So she placed her hand in his and followed him to the truck.

They rode in silence. Luke was concentrating mostly on the road, and the snow, which had picked up again after its brief rest. The wind had also picked up blowing drifts of snow in a snake-like pattern across the highway and making it seem as though twice as much snow was falling as actually was.

"Do you have your cell phone?" Lorelai's voice broke the silence after several minutes. Luke stole a glance at her ever so briefly before returning his attention to the road. "I told my mom I'd call her once I got home so she'd know I was safe. She's probably wondering where I am, but I left my phone at her house on accident."

"I got rid of it," Luke stated flatly. "I only bought it because…" he didn't need to finish that sentence.

"Oh." Lorelai said, imitating his tone. Against her will Lorelai remembered the first cell phone Luke had owned. Nicole had convinced him to buy it, and he had gotten rid of it after their breakup. History repeats itself, I guess.

More silence followed. However, as we all know, Lorelai is not good with silence. So she starts talking about the last thing Luke wants to hear, simply because he has no choice but to listen and she needs to talk.

"Christopher and I had a fight."

Luke said nothing, choosing to keep his eyes on the road and his mouth shut.

Lorelai's voice revealed that she was near tears, but she gave a little laugh as she said, "Sherry wants him to send Gigi to Paris to be with her, and he thinks it's a great idea. He's going to send his four-year old kid to be with a woman that she doesn't even remember in a country that is 8 hours away by plane. And he's not even going to take her himself. He's going to send her with the nanny."

Luke knew that he was supposed to say something at this point, but he also knew that nothing he could possibly say would be satisfactory.

"It's a little ironic, you know?" Lorelai continued, desperately needing to fill the silence. "I go from being with a man who is so good a father that he neglects his girlfriend, to being with a man who is a horrible father but dotes on his girlfriend."

"Sure is," Luke finally says. He is trying desperately not to be involved in this conversation, as he knows that it is going in a very dangerous direction, but Lorelai is succeeding in drawing him in, just like she always does.

"I mean, if Anna abandoned April and then wanted you to send her to Europe three years later, would you do it?"

"Probably not."

"You'd at least go with her, right?"

"Yeah."

"What are the odds of me getting any verbs out of you tonight?"

"Not good."

"So…" Lorelai's was about to speak again when a pair of headlights came seemingly out of nowhere from the other direction. Luke swerved to the right to avoid a head-on collision. The truck fishtailed to the left, and then to the right as Luke overcompensated, and then skidded out of control into the ditch, rolling completely onto the passenger side.

"Oh my God!" Lorelai exclaimed.

--

Emily was beginning to panic. She dialed Lorelai's house number for the 200th time. And for the 200th time she heard Lorelai's voice, doing her best pot-head imitation, "Sorry, dude, I'm just way too stoked to talk right now, so, like, leave a message."

Emily hung up the phone. It was now past 11, more than two hours since Lorelai had left. Emily picked up the phone once again, but this time dialed 9-1-1.

--

"Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God!" Lorelai was still screaming over and over again.

"Are you okay?" Luke asked as soon as she stopped screaming long enough to take a breath. He turned the key to cut power to the engine.

"Well, let's see. I'm in a truck that has just _rolled_ into the ditch. So yeah, I'd say that, unless by some miracle a pack of hungry wolves shows up, this day couldn't get any better."

"But you're not hurt."

Lorelai reached a trembling hand to the side of her head, where she'd banged it against the side of the truck. "I'm not bleeding," she announced.

"Good."

"What about you?"

"I think I'm alright. Remind me to send a gift basket to whoever invented the seat-belt when we get home." In fact, Luke's seatbelt was the only thing holding him in place at that moment. He was nearly suspended in mid-air.

Lorelai chose to ignore the fact that he'd said 'when we get home,' implying that they were going together to the same home. She instead focused on getting her own seatbelt undone, which was easy for her as all of her weight was against the door of the truck. Once she was free she maneuvered herself so that she was upright, with her back against the roof of the cab.

Luke was having a bit more trouble. He couldn't just release the seatbelt. That would cause him to fall directly on top of Lorelai. He stretched his feet down towards her and turned in his seat so that his back was against the door of the truck and his legs were resting against the seat. Lorelai came as close as she could to standing upright and guided him to do the same as he unfastened his seatbelt. As his feet hit the passenger door that they were both standing on he stumbled against her, pushing her back against the roof of the cab. This momentum caused the truck, which was already in a position that defied physics, to roll the rest of the way so that it was completely upside down, throwing Lorelai backwards onto the roof of the cab and Luke forwards on top of Lorelai. It was something that, had they been watching it on television would have been hilarious, but being that it was very real and very scary, no one was laughing.

"Ooph," Lorelai let out as Luke's weight knocked the wind out of her. Not only was this a horribly uncomfortable position, but it also brought Luke and Lorelai uncomfortably close to each other. Luke scrambled to get off of her, pulling himself first to his knees and then backwards to sit cross legged at one end of the truck, while Lorelai first caught her breath and then also sat herself up, sitting cross legged at the other end.

"Now what?" She asked.

"Well," Luke began as turned and tried to see out the window, "we could go out there and try to flag down some help."

"Is there an 'or,' because other than you, me, and whoever that idiot was I haven't seen a single car yet tonight? Plus I'm wearing the wrong shoes for that."

"Or, we stay in here and wait until morning."

"But isn't the gas tank going to explode? In the movies whenever a car rolls over the gas tank always explodes."

"It's not likely," Luke assured her.

"So…we just sit here and freeze?"

Luke opened the glove box to reveal what looked like a blanket rolled to the size of a shoe. He threw it at Lorelai.

Lorelai turned it over once or twice in her hands and said, "Oh, now this is cute. My dolly will be nice and warm."

"It's a thermal sleeping bag. You don't keep one in your car?"

"No, camper Joe, I don't."

"Tell me you at least have an emergency kit."

"Um…"

"You know: a candle, matches, coffee tin, energy bar, red bandana, road flares…"

"No, I can't say that I do."

"How can you not have an emergency kit? You drive in the winter. What if you were in an accident?"

"If I were in an accident I would wait patiently for a man with an emergency kit and a thermal sleeping bag to drive by."

Luke rolled his eyes.

--

**A/N** So this was originally going to be a one-shot, but it's already 7 pages long. There will probably only be one more chapter. Please review!** I might not finish it at all if no one reviews. So review, please!!!!!**


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing but the computer this story is being written on and the hands that are writing it. The opening quote is from "The Perfect Dress"

**Synopsis**: What if Chris and Lorelai hadn't made up during _The Great Stink_, and Connecticut was hit by an early snowstorm? L/L

**A/N**: Assume that Lorelai and Chris drove separately to Friday night dinner, and that Rory never showed up.

**A/N II**: If any of you are reading my other fic, _The Balance of the Universe_, don't worry, I'm not taking a sabbatical. If any of you are not reading it, you should be!

I must say thank-you for all of the reviews. FIFTEEN for one chapter? Unheard of. I am glad that all of you reviewed, and I have a couple of responses. If I don't respond to your review, don't take it personally.

**Pishymeow: **I wasn't really sure at first if your review was good or bad. I know that them being stuck somewhere and having to work things out seems a little too easy, but it's fun and I hope that I do it justice.

**MM Vermelha:** Anything for my friends from South America!

**Gymtig:** Hm…I hope you're not expecting anything too dirty. Remember this fic is rated K+

**Biscottimoment: **LOL I'm the same way.

And now for the conclusion…

When it Snows

Part 2

_Remember the snow? The snow never lies._

The 911 operator was slowly losing his will to live.

"My daughter is stranded somewhere in this God awful storm! She could be bleeding or freezing to death. How would you like it if your daughter was freezing to death! Here's an idea. Since you claim that the weather is too bad for the police to go looking for her, how about you go yourself! Then you can go into the ditch somewhere and see how it feels!" Emily was yelling as loudly as she could, pacing back and forth in her living room.

"Ma'am, I understand your frustration. As soon as the snow lets up the police will be out searching all the roads for drivers needing assistance. It is simply too dangerous right now. Even if your daughter is in trouble…"

"Even if?!? So now you're calling me a liar?"

"No, ma'am. All I'm saying is that we don't know for sure that she's hurt, so there's really no reason for you to panic."

"I am not panicking. If you want to see panicking, I can show you panicking, but this is not panicking! This is me being infuriated at the man who should be fearing for his life right now!"

"Ma'am, I need you to understand that sending the police out right now would do your daughter no good. If she is in trouble they won't be able to find her until the snow lets up, and they would be risking their lives in the process."

"Well then, I sure hope that if your house is ever burning down the fire fighters decide to wait until the smoke clears to come rescue you because they're not going to be able to see you and they might be risking their own lives."

Fortunately for the operator, Emily chose that moment to slam the phone back into its cradle, saving him from the embarrassment of having to say anything else.

--

"Ah, ambiance," Lorelai stated as Luke lit the candle inside the coffee can. She was sitting wrapped up in his sleeping bag. He was visibly shivering, but continued to insist that he was fine and didn't need her to share.

"Now you see," he explained, "the candle will warm up the coffee can and the can will act like a radiator, warming the entire truck."

Lorelai smiled. "Yet _another_ good reason to drink coffee. So let me ask you something."

"Yes?"

"Candles burn oxygen, right?"

"Right."

"And humans breathe oxygen, right?"

"Right."

"So do you think that, between the two humans and the one candle in here, there's going to be enough oxygen to go around?"

"Probably not."

"Luke!"

Luke smiled. "Relax. This truck is nowhere near air-tight, especially with the broken window."

"So tomorrow morning when the police drive by, see the truck upside down, and come down to see if we're alright, they're not going to find two dead bodies and a burnt out candle?"

"Nope. They might find two alive and slightly cold bodies and a burnt out candle, considering this is a really cheap candle and I don't think it will last all night."

"Just checking."

"So…" Luke started.

"Luke, do you hate me?" Lorelai asked, her voice turning serious.

"What?!?"

"You heard me."

"No, Lorelai, I…why are you asking me this?"

"Because I left the twister mat at home. No, really, it just seems like as good a time as any to have this conversation, especially since you can't run away from me. I mean you could, but I figure it's safe to bet that you probably won't."

"I don't hate you."

"You could, you know. I deserve it." Lorelai looked down at her hands

"Do _you _hate _me_?" Luke leaned towards her a little, daring her to look him in the eye as he answered.

"No, Luke, of course not. How could I? I'm the one who," she swallowed, "who cheated on you. All you ever did was want to be a good dad. But I was too selfish to let you do that. I was jealous, god, _jealous_ of your daughter. I'd had you for ten years, and I couldn't even let her have you for a few months."

When Luke didn't respond, Lorelai continued talking. "It's just that…I was so close. So close to finally having _it_. The whole package. I could actually feel it. I could see myself, walking down the aisle, dressed in the perfect dress. I could see us waking up together every morning. I could see you talking to my stomach and hiding my coffee from me. I could even see us forty years from now, both with gray hair, sitting across from each other at a table in a retirement home playing poker. And then you weren't ready. And I got scared. Really scared."

Luke sighed and reached out to play with the edge of the sleeping bag where it flowed off of her lap. "It wasn't all your fault," he assured her. "I never should have hid April from you. I should have told you about her from the start. I should have let you be involved in that part of my life."

"But you couldn't. And I understand that. I can't say that I would have done anything differently." Lorelai stretched out her hand and wrapped it around his own where it sat by her knee. "I'm sorry things ended the way they did."

"Yeah, me too. You know I don't hate you, but you know who I do hate? Christopher."

"Yes, I think you made that painfully obvious. Quite literally. He had a black eye for more than a week."

"He deserved it. He took advantage of you. You went to him for comfort, which makes since seeing as he's one of your oldest friends, and he let it go to far."

"He didn't force me. I knew what I was doing."

"Tell me something. If you hadn't gone to him that night, would you have eloped with me the next morning?"

Lorelai sighed. She sat back and allowed herself to remember that morning. Picturing in her mind the look on his face as he had stood there, listening to her confession, was enough to break her heart all over again. But as much as she wanted the answer to his question to be, 'yes, I would have gone with you to the ends of the earth,' she knew in her heart that it wasn't true. So she answered him honestly. "Probably not."

"Why not?"

"Because I was hurting too much. I wanted to, really I did, but I didn't want to run off and marry you just because you felt like it was the only way to keep me. I wanted it to be what you wanted too. But it wasn't. You didn't want me anymore. That was clear the next day when I saw you in the street."

"I did too want you. Yeah it took me a few hours to come to my senses, but it took me eight years to even get up the nerve to ask you out. Did you really think that I was going to drop everything and marry you without putting even a minute's thought into it?" Luke was shouting now, his hand pulled back away from hers and gesturing expressively.

"If you really loved me you would have!" Lorelai yelled back.

"And if you really loved me you wouldn't have given me an ultimatum!"

Lorelai forced her voice back to a normal volume and said, "If you really loved me, I wouldn't have needed to."

Luke closed his eyes, defeated. "So does this mean that we were never really in love?"

"I guess it does," Lorelai answered, not believing her own words for a second.

Luke gave off a small "humph," that could have been interpreted as a chuckle.

"What?" Lorelai asked.

"I'm just wondering if Andrew will give me my $14.99 back."

"For what?"

"For that damn self-help book, because if we were never really in love then that book did me nothing. It led me to you, and for the first time I thought I knew what love was. But I guess I was wrong."

"I guess we both were."

"Hey Lorelai?"

"Yeah?"

"Were we really wrong?"

"God I hope not."

"What do you mean?"

"I can't imagine anything ever being more wonderful than what I felt for you, so if that's not being in love I'm afraid that when love does come along I'll be disappointed."

"Well then, I hope not too."

--

2:30 AM

The candle slowly flickered, drowning in a pool of its own wax. It wouldn't last much longer. Luke and Lorelai were now both lying down, wrapped in the sleeping bag, with Lorelai's head on one end of the truck and Luke's on the other, back to back. They had been trying to sleep for the past hour and were failing miserably, due to the cold, the lack of comfort, and quite possibly more than anything the conversation they'd had.

"Are you sleeping?" Lorelai asked.

"Yes." Luke responded in a voice that was clearly not asleep.

"Ha ha good one. What are you thinking about?"

"You. Love. Us. Christopher." He punctuated each thought as a completely separate entity.

Lorelai turned so that she was on her back, propped herself up on her elbows, and looked down at him. "So as long as we're not sleeping, and since we've already brought up the subject of 'us' many times, can I ask you something else?"

"Sure."

"If I hadn't slept with Christopher, but I still hadn't gone with you that next morning after my performance in the street, would we still be together?"

Luke sighed. "I don't know. At that point we had both asked to elope, and we had both said no. Where would that leave us?"

"Right back where we started?"

"I suppose. Why do you ask?"

Now it was Lorelai's turn to sigh. "I'm ending it with Christopher."

Luke turned to his back and imitated her posture, looking back at her. "Why?" he asked. "Because you had a fight?"

"No."

"Well then…"

"Because I don't love him. Since we talked about love I've been laying here thinking that, even if you and I weren't in love, which I still don't believe, by the way, I know for sure that Chris and I aren't in love. We've had a relationship for more than 20 years…more than half of our lives. If we were in love, we would have made it work years earlier."

"And when did you figure this out? Just now?"

"No. The truth is that I've always known that. I knew it the morning after we fought, when I woke up in his apartment and knew that it was the last place on earth that I wanted to be. I knew it when he told me he loved me only a couple days later. I knew it when we started dating and I know it now."

"So why did you go out with him at all?"

"I…I guess I thought he deserved a chance. No, that's not true, but that's what I've been telling myself. I was in pain—still am, actually—and he comforts me. When we're together I'm sixteen again and I can temporarily forget that I've lost the only man I ever loved. But as soon as I leave him I feel the pain again, stronger than before. He's like some sort of drug for me. He always has been. Like an old addiction that I can't seem to ditch. I go to him when I'm down; he picks me up for a while and then drops me again. It's always been like that."

"So…where does that leave us?"

"I don't know, Luke. I don't think we can just pretend that these last few, horrible months never happened. I don't think we can just go back to the way we were."

--

7:00 AM

The police car followed the snow-plow down the highway, looking for stranded motorists. They'd found an abandoned Jeep, matching the description of one owned by a Ms. Lorelai Gilmore, who had been missing since the previous night according to her mother.

Far off in the right ditch, covered by nearly a foot of snow but still visible, the officer in the passenger seat spotted an overturned pickup truck. He pointed it out to his partner, who parked the squad car. They got out and slowly made their way to the truck, climbing over snow drifts that were as much as 3 feet deep. Both were fearing the worst as they approached the cab, digging through the snow that had piled up against the window.

--

Luke and Lorelai, at this point sleeping with their heads at the same side of the cab, spooned together for warmth, were awoken by the beeping noise of the snowplow. It took them a moment to register where they were and what had happened. Looking around they realized that the windows of the truck were almost entirely buried in snow. They tried both doors but neither would open, and they weren't able to roll the windows down.

"Help!" They both cried as they heard voices outside.

--

"Help!"

The police officers heard someone—maybe two someones—cry from inside the truck.

"Hello? Are you hurt?" one of them called back.

"Hello?" Luke yelled. "We're okay, but we're stuck in here."

"Okay, don't worry, we'll get you out."

--

8:00 that evening

Lorelai was parked in front of the diner, a place she had been avoiding like the plague for nearly four months. The diner was empty; Luke was wiping tables and putting chairs up. Lorelai took a deep breath and then went in.

Luke knew who it was without looking up. "Hey."

"Hey back."

"Coffee?"

"Do you have to ask? And a burger, if you've got any left," Lorelai said as she sat down at the counter.

"You look nice."

"Yes, well, I went out for dinner."

"And so the burger is…dessert?"

"I went out for dinner, but I didn't eat. However, you can be assured that Christopher is completely out of the picture."

"One burger, coming right up." Luke disappeared into the kitchen and then came back out. He was carrying a burger and fries in his left hand, and his right hand was hidden behind his back."

"Ah!?! Were you saving that for me?"

"Maybe."

"Am I _that_ predictable? You _knew_ that I would be here and you made me a burger. That's cute."

Luke pulled his other hand out from behind his back. He was holding a white rose."

Lorelai was speechless.

"Peace?" Luke asked.

"Uh…yeah, peace." Lorelai gave Luke a weird little smile.

"So I was thinking," Luke began, leaning in closer.

"Yeah?" Lorelai leaned in as well, so that their faces were only about six inches apart across the counter.

"If we can't go back to the way things were when we were together…"

"Yeah…"

"And we can't go back to the way things were _before_ we were together…"

"Yeah…"

"Lorelai?"

"Yes?"

"Would you like to go to dinner sometime with me?"

Lorelai put a surprised look on her face that may or may not have been real and asked, "Lucas, are you asking me out?"

Luke smiled. "Tomorrow night?"

"Okay, but…"

"But?" Luke looked scared.

"But…what about tonight?"

"What about it?"

"You got some big plans, or…"

"No," Luke smiled, "no I don't. Why, you have something in mind?"

"Well…I'm here, and you're here, and I'm eating dinner…could this be a…a date?" Lorelai had a mischievous grin plastered all over her face.

"I suppose," Luke answered, mimicking her grin, as he walked to the door of the diner, turned the sign to "closed," and locked the door.

--END--


End file.
